Drewboy, thanks for posting your thoughts. I appreciated reading them. I think... well, you all know far too well what I think. :)

Truthfully, I am happy we've been having this discussion. I'm eager to hear from other folks who feel similarly, who wish to have a friendlier atmosphere here. Also looking for suggestions. (like, what's different about this forum from other ones you've been a part of?)

No one has to participate. If you feel the conversation is over, just don't continue to be a part of it. Why shut it down?

I believe the solution to all this is very clear. First of all, you cannot possibly be serious in hoping to change the attitude of some members here. Having worked in social services for many years, I have come to realize that personalities are unchangeable however you put the argument to them for change.

Secondly, to avoid the rude ones upsetting everyone, Alex spelt out the answer to this a while back: Rude People - do not post if you cannot offer constructive help! - requires no personality adjustment for that one, but should be made more apparent perhaps as a term of membership to the forums.

Lastly it has to be said that all large script program packages are complex, even for experienced users and put on top SQL and the thousands of different configuration of Apache etc, we have a melting pot of complexity that demands a self understanding of a least the basics of databases etc, even after the much anticipated manuals are released.

This is no Plug-and-Play stuff here!

In conclusion...

1: For people upset by discourtesy: See section #1 & #2 2: For people frustrated by "silly" questions: : See section #2 3: For newbies who think this is like working with windows: See section #3

Maybe my post was somewhat misleading. I didn't meant a general "ranking" of the forum. I would say that both serve it purpose well, so I would rank them a tie. Both are very important in making a decision to buy the software (i.e. I wouldnt buy the software if both were not there...I own a copy of wwwthreads and not yet links sql, but for other reasons).

What I mean is that I see a somewhat more 'friendly' and 'relaxed' attitude at wwwthreads. Of course the fact that wwwthreads community is smaller (and they only have one product) makes relationships easier...

I am involved in a few forums, vbulletin and also futurequest forums, both of which are friendly and helpful. I think the vetrans enjoy the place as much as newbies. And I think both groups benefit.

I hung out at WT3 for a while when I was considering buying their forums software, but found it was a really small group of people and wasn't as helpful as I'd like. IMHO. And, I ended up liking vB better.

My whole point is that I have been a part of wholesome communities on the web that support a specific product. I have spelled out what I want, but am looking to hear from more folks who want change as well. :)

I'm beginning to think that it boils down to some simple things that people could do whilst participating in these, and for that matter, any support or community based forums;

• Use common courtesy - be polite when asking for assistance, or offering advice. If someone is rude to you, whatever their experience and/or status, ignore it and ignore them in that thread. Individual slagging matches don't benefit anyone and the added hostility only works against the ideal of 'support'!!

It takes milliseconds to post a knee-jerk reply to someone you think has been rude to you. Yes, sometimes people can be rude, but re-read the reply slowly and think about what has been said before you go attacking someone, better still, just learn to ignore it. Believe me when I say that you are not going to "lose face" with anyone else in forums if you simply ignore a rude reply!!!

• Use a bit of common sense - where possible do try to search for answers first. The GT forums all have a fair amount of archive posts, many of which cover the most common problems encountered with installation and setup (you're most likely not the first person to have this problem!), and some of which will cover the popular modifications that most people want to use (it has most likely been thought of before or at least discussed).

• Try to be patient - sure, you might be in a pickle or your site may have fallen apart and you may be unbelievably frustrated by the problems you are having, but ultimately the GT forums are populated with people just like you who offer their advice and support for free, in whatever spare time they have.

Sometimes it may take a little while before an experienced user reads your post and is able to offer you a solution or assistance. Sometimes the problem may be so unique to your setup that no-one has encountered it yet, in which case it may take some time for people to 'discover' what the problems is and how the fix should be approached. Occasionally, there isn't a fix, or the feature you want hasn't been done before, or isn't do-able, in which case you may not get a reply at all.

• Use a helpful Subject title - sum-up the 'core' issue/problem/suggestion/bug in the subject as best you can, using some key words that give other people a clear idea of what your thread is about. Here's a selection of posts that I've pulled directly from the GT forums with unhelpful subjects first, and suggested helpful subjects afterwards;

These are just a few, but improving the key information in the subject gives regular forums users a chance to see very quickly if it's something they can help you with, especially if it has been encountered before.

---------------

I apologise for rambling, and I appreciate that much of this has already been said, but I do think these are key issues for people to consider and that good manners and a bit of common sense is really all that is needed to participate in, and enjoy using, GT's support forums.

Yup. I gotta agree with you there Shaun. If everyone would show a little bit more curtesy when answering / making posts, these forums would be a much nicer place (not that they are'n nice at the moment, ). I'm sure you can see where I'm comming from.

On my forum, even though it does take up bandwidth and server space, I put simple "rules to live and post by" in the footer of every forum page. The rules are a bit different becasue the community servers a different purpose, but that was folks are reminded every time the go to post, what the expected community standards are. I think it keeps people more within the expected behaviors. Any chance of GT coming up with a set of community expectations and placing it in the footer?

hmmm .... I'm not a newbie. I don't know sqat about perl / sql / or really even about my system OS X. I've been around here for ... 2-3 years. I ramble alot. I ask alot of repeat questions. I ask questions that go unanswered. I DO try to say thank you -- well I actually say I appreciate it. I try to behave. I do searches across 4 sites that relate to GT. I can't find threads sometimes, while others find them easily :-( People have been rude to me and I'm sure I was rude to someone somehow too. I'm not perfect and neither is anyone else.

I post here since this is the only real place that can answer my questions about this script. Sure I could send personal emails to Alex or the GT team. But I use the forums instead since that is where I believe I should post my questions. I may be wrong about this since I'm wrong about many things.

I'm really terribly sorry but this thread should NOT stop. This is a real issue and pretending won't make it go away.

There are some very real issues here that need to be addressed by ALL of us including Alex who is in a very difficult position trying to balance his income and support concerns.

some random thoughts: - Building a FAQ or a Book would be great but still many people only read a manual that contains combinations needed to perform a secret move for the last fad game. haha, I've read the dbman manual about 3-4 times and still I had no clue what's happening. - people being nice in general would be wonderful, but unlikely sad to say. - people are scared to post ... boy that's really sad and not good business. - I burn out after just visiting these forums for a week or 2 -- I don't even post half of the time while I'm lurking AND I still burn out -- why ??? - restructuring of the forums is necessary -- yes, I saw a response above, but I posted something similar at macfixit.com and guess what a few weeks later new categories were built. Why not? My idea is that a resturcture will, of course, create many areas to visit and to maintain and will contain many of the same questions, but what they do provide is a stress sensitive level to deal with. It's a psychological situation in a sense, I'm entering a newbie corner --- errr ---- smile ---- errr --- how can I help you "wink and smile" You've just prepared yourself to deal with the same-o-same-o and guess what the stress is even less. - search function needs an overhaul -- yep, I found many of the same types of threads, "I need help with XXX." "Well search for XXX" haha ... how frustrating just to dig through these types of threads since they ALL use the same search KEYWORDs, I have to set my search amount up to 250 ever time just to find something.

Economics also play a big part of these boards. GT gets their share, some people who help get their share and people who download the "pay-if-you're-commerical but don't have to if you're not" get their share. But there are others who BUY this script and don't get their share except through their own sites. ha - a lot of this stress comes down to money doesn't it?

What really worries me are the folks who don't know the difference between a GT product and a competitor's product. If I wasn't here from way back -- guess what --- I bet I wouldn't bother. Plain and simple. Sure argue till you're blue in that face that GT is great and all but people do sometimes research there options and if there are forums read the the threads. ooops economics again.

I feel sorry for the guy above who was trying to be honest but got a little roused by all the surrounding posts. Haven't any of you felt similar in one way or another to somebody above who has posted in one direction or the other?

Folks we are all in this together, one big family and every family has it problems. We just need to pull together to fix them, NOT ignore them or hope that Alex can make all well again. The scripts are just the foundation of the GT system but the forums are what brings a site to life and give it a human touch.

So, to close this rantingly long thread -- let's spread the harmony and be nice to each other we're all human and we all have our problems.

sorry, I posted a little late. I didn't realize my connection had dropped.

hey, that's definately a good place to start.

One last question, some folks mention bandwidth bandwidth and saving bandwidth. ummm, doesn't this site make enough income to pay basic business expenditures?

I see it this way, bandwidth at the begining was a simple and easy expenditure to cover while GT scripts were still starting to get around. Now, there has to be a steady base or there wouldn't be any FAQs or Books being written.

Folks, GT is a company and not open source. If GT were open source then I would be all out for saving bandwidth and help with cost cutting. I'm not saying to wasteful and post your whole html.pl or something but talking about semi-related topics shouldn't be shut down with "you're wasting bandwidth" If we are and GT isn't making money I'm really sorry about all that, but let's not forget that this bandwidth does also bring in new customers and users.

I played with scripts for close to 2 years from here and used lot's of bandwidth, but I DID pay for 2 scripts. So was the trade off worth it?

I found these forums so initimidating that, coupled with the necessity of using them absence adequate documentation, that I decided that I would buy GT software only if I could not find a decent alternative.

In general, I dislike the tendency among software developers to substitute forums for good documentation. Forums are useful for getting answers to very specific questions, but not for trying to figure out, in general, how a product works. It takes hours, days, weeks of searching and reading through forums to try to piece together the overview needed of a product to even begin to use it productively. As others have said, I would happily pay for good manual so as to not impose the costs on others who never RTFM, but I doubt 90 pages would do it. samantha

The Links SQL manual is in place, the support tracking system is in place, we have Bruce who is working right now on managing the resource center and moving/categorizing helpful threads, you'll see Adrian (brewt) and Jason (jagerman) in the forums quite often, as well as myself helping people out.

Hopefully the atmosphere has gotten a bit better, and people are more open to posting friendly questions.

I'm curious if you have seen the Links SQL manual? Did it not help? We have had only limited feedback (most of which has been positive), so I'm not quite sure what would help best.

Hey Alex, just a quick comment after clicking the link above...it seems that the URL is getting chopped after the first ; so the link gives permission denied....this seems to happen with all URL's with ;'s in.

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